As the global human overpopulation crisis continues to intensify, the planet is beginning to feel the strain on its carrying capacity. One of the most obvious and most dire symptoms of this emergency is the human impact on fresh water supply. Not only do more people demand drinking water, but their industrial and agricultural needs for this commodity more than proportionally increase with population rise. Even as demand rises, the supply is mindlessly diminished through careless destruction of natural habitat that serves to catch and retain accumulated rainfall in its clean and unpolluted state, and through nearsighted contamination and pollution of such decreasing resources as still exist. Further still, human environmental impact now has a global, climatological reach, and many well respected minds express concern that such an impact will wreak havoc on the reliability of rainfall in heavily populated areas. Not only are shortages being experienced in overpopulated desert and semi-arid locales, but even well watered communities are already experiencing periods of artificially-induced droughts. In a nutshell, there is too little clean water, and more polluted water than we know what to do with. This symptom of the population crisis intersects with another: the needlessly single-use exploitation of very finite mineral and chemical resources which invariably are converted to "waste" and which find their way into solid dumps, our air, and, needless to say, our water. Even aside from the shortage of water or front the dangers of toxic contaminant proliferation, the senseless, cavalier, single-use attitudes to these resources alone is cause for concern.
The present invention has been designed to help address all these concerns, while expending as little valuable commercial energy as possible. It provides a means by which seawater or contaminated fresh water (henceforward both collectively referred to as "load water" or "load") can be processed to separate the water from its contaminants, including salt. Thus, the products of this process are 1.) fresh water and 2.) dry contaminants- Due to the solid state of the latter after processing, they are then amenable to further commercial treatment for reexploitation. Even where such post-process treatment cannot be undertaken or must be delayed, storage of these dry materials in their solid state takes up less space, is more safely accomplished with less risk of groundwater or other contamination, and does not pointlessly lock up fresh water in the storage process. The invention described herein will not effectively remove microorganisms, nor is it designed to extract volatile substances. Nevertheless, these contaminants are easily removed before and after the use of the instantly disclosed device through standard sterilization (i.e. chlorination, UV, ozone treatments, etc.) and aeration processes well known to the water-treatment industry.
The apparatus disclosed in this application incorporates improvements and modifications over earlier patents granted to one of the applicants of the instant application, and like those earlier designs seeks to exploit solar and other sources of energy to minimize, and in some cases eliminate, the need to consume commercial energy which is largely produced from ecologically unsound sources. The main changes reflected in the instant application are directed to further increasing the efficiency of 1.) the condensation process within the domed upper structure, 2.) the recovery of waste heat, 3.) the exploitation of solar/ambient heat, and 3.) the flexible use of various commercial heat sources. Additionally, various design improvement are also intended to reduce construction and maintenance costs.